13th Annual States' Taxation Conference

Published on 25 Jul 2013
| Took place at Hilton, Adelaide
, SA

The Annual States’ Taxation Conference remains the only national conference covering all state and territory taxes in one technical program. With presenters from both the private and government sectors, the program was pitched at a level that provides the general practitioner with a good understanding of current issues, with more technical topics covered in depth for the tax specialists.

Considerable effort was made to present topics with content covering the legislation of all the states and territories. These included the Commissioners’ audit and investigative powers, exemptions and concessions in landholder duty, issues affecting contracts, the judicial and administrative approach to aggregation, public takeovers, and issues arising under the various self-assessment regimes. There was the usual update on significant cases will be followed by an expert panel discussion drawing out the practical implications from the key cases. Payroll tax topics were also extensive, including exemptions, rebates and concessions, the employment agency provisions, and harmonisation from a practitioner’s perspectives.

The aggregation of taxes

Author(s): Harry LAKIS

Harry Lakis will outline the courts’ analysis of aggregation by reference to the key cases, with Jim Richards providing an administrator’s perspective. These presentations will provide a comparison of the aggregation provisions and the Revenue Offices’ approaches, including:

how the “transfer model” jurisdictions differ from the others

factors required to be considered

when evaluating the factors, whose perspective is most relevant?

the availability of discretions

direction in which case law is moving

the approach taken when evaluating the aggregation of interests that may comprise a “significant interest” in the landholder/land rich context.